Mélusine Read Online Free PDF Page B

Stephen to let me go, and that I could not do.

    And if I were just to leave… with the tattoos on my hands and forearms, crimson and azure, emerald and gold, gaudy, blazing, like a fanfare of trumpets or a cavalcade of banners, I could not hide what I was. The guards at the city gates would not hinder my passage, but they would remember me, and they would tell anyone who came riding after me just when I'd passed the gates and which direction I'd been going when they lost sight of me.

    I wondered, with a convulsive shiver, if I could hide in the Lower City, he Lower City had always been a haven for apostate wizards, heretics, dissidents of all stripes. Would my tattoos make them leave me alone, or would they turn them against me? I tried to remember what I had thought of wizards as a child, before Malkar had found me, but all I could remember were the times I'd had them as clients. I'd asked one about the tattoos, I remembered: Don't it hurt, having that done ? And he'd laughed and said, Everything worthwhile hurts. Surely you know that.

    But the thought of the Lower City gave me the answer. The Arcane. I went down there often enough; if the denizens were not used to me per se, they did not look on me as anything peculiar. They might give me space. And the court wouldn't know to look for me in the Arcane. The court barely knew the Arcane existed.

    I almost bolted out of that antechamber, despairingly glad to have a direction, a purpose. I realized only then, as I crossed from the straw-colored carpet to the smooth parquet of the Stoa Errata, that my feet were bare. I must have left my stockings and boots in Malkar's suite, and of course it would have amused him to let me do so, to let me walk out with my feet bare, my hair unbraided. I ran a panicky glance over my person, but the only other thing missing was my gold wizard's sash, and I wouldn't need that where I was going.

    "I can buy shoes," I muttered to myself. "I can buy shoes in the Arcane." And then I gave a sort of strangled howl and plunged my hands into my pockets. No money, of course. I'd used the last of it the night before, buying… I flinched away from completing that thought.

    But my fingers found my watch, the watch that Shannon had given to me for my birthday last year. I didn't know when my birthday was, of course, but Shannon had asked and I had made up an answer, and I could still remember the delight on his face when I opened the box he gave me. My hand clenched around the watch's cool, hard smoothness, and I thought, it's perfectly possible to redeem things from a pawnbroker. Once I'm making money again, I can get it back. I did not ask myself how I was going to make money in the Arcane, but there were always ways. My childhood had taught me that.
    I descended through the levels of the Mirador as quickly as I could, avoiding the legions of servants who were preparing the fortress and the court to face another day. I had a vague, uneasy feeling, too gossamer-thin even to be called a hunch, that I had only a limited amount of time, as if I were caught in one of the fairy tales that Belinda had liked to tell. This muddled, superstitious instinct told me that if I was not out of the Mirador by dawn, I would find all its gates locked against me, and I would be trapped. I was all but running by the time I reached the Rose Arbor, already mentally tracing my course through the Warren to the Mortisgate, where the guards would be coming off duty, and even if they noticed me, would not be curious.
    Once again I was unaware of Malkar until he spoke.

    "Felix!" he said, one hand, as powerful as a lion's paw, catching my arm before I could get by him. I could tell from his expression that he had decided to ignore the events of the night, ignore them in his own peculiar way that meant I would never be allowed to forget them.

    "Malkar," I said; I could hear the strain and fear in my voice and hated myself for giving him the satisfaction. "Guh-good